Like A Ghost
by elphabathedelirious32
Summary: There was someone we didn't see watching 'Thank Goodness.'
1. Announcement

The citizens of the Emerald City, clad in their customary odious fashion, poured into the square, chattering away and filling the peaceful summer day with noise. A young woman seated on a bench accompanied by only a large broadside and a book, peered over the top of the sheet in annoyance. Her intelligent eyes flicked over the scene with feline vigilance, their intensity forcing anyone who accidentally caught them to turn away, half-horrified, half-hypnotized. The woman sighed, yanked down the brim of her hat, and hid once again before the large folio of the broadside. Irony: her face, or a meager approximation of it, decorated the front page. But the green tint of the light reflecting off the pond before her and the emerald buildings around her made her safe, as did the portrait on the front page itself, meant to show everyone what she looked like so that she _couldn't _venture out without being caught. But the fact was that the picture looked nothing like her. It depicted an old hag, not a young girl who would have, if she had stayed, graduated from university only a few months before. She was fierce and firm, certainly, but no expression of hers could mimic the monstrous snarl of the portrait. And she did not have a wart on her nose, either. She had had a pimple next to her nose the week before, but it was gone now, anyway. She didn't care, either, it just annoyed her that she should get the negative side of her age and not the benefits.

Speaking of which, the purpose of the gathering in the square now came to light. As the City's denizens whispered among themselves about the terror of the Wicked Witch, who was even now suppressing laughter behind her newspaper, another young woman ascended to the podium in the square's center, accompanied by a young man in the uniform of a guardsman, the sun glinting off the gold decorating his shoulders and chest, and an older woman gotten up nearly obscenely in bustles and lime green. Glinda the Good. Fiyero- no, Captain Tiggular of the _Gale Force_- and Madame Morrible. How charming.

She forced herself to be dispassionate as she listened to them speak. But what was that note in Fiyero's voice? Not hatred. What, then?

But Morrible interrupted. He and Glinda were to be engaged. Elphaba forced the emotion from her face and twisted on her bench, recklessly, to look. Fiyero was as shocked as she, she could tell. Clearly he had not been informed that he had proposed to Glinda yet. Despite the pain ripping at her heartstrings- _it was never going to happen, Elphaba-_ she couldn't help the slight amusement creeping along the horizons of her brain- _just as Glinda said it would be, she's been planning this since the day they met, the silly girl!- _She noticed one of the observers casting an apprehensive look at her and buried her face in her newspaper again, muttering almost inaudibly to herself.

"_Deterreo suspicio_," she whispered, one of the short spells she had found it necessary to memorize. Deter suspicion. It was the one she used most often, despite the inaccurate portrait and the pervasive greenness of the City. It was this that led Elphaba to suspect that even if she had not been born green, she still would have been recognized as _different_, for which she was at least somewhat thankful. At least it was not purely an accident of birth that had made her who she was. At least it wasn't just her skin, it was something innate in her character. She listened to the cheers of the crowd. She listened to Morrible lie about her shamelessly. _Bitch_. She had been her teacher. Supposed to guide her, supposed to encourage her to think for herself, supposed to help her. And instead she spread lies about her. In Elphaba's opinion, not even the Wizard himself was more evil. And he _was _evil.

Fiyero whispered something heated to Glinda. Elphaba watched out of the corner of her eye, riveted. He stalked off the stage, followed by Glinda. Elphaba yanked the paper higher over her face, they were _right in front of her_, close enough for her to reach out and touch.

"That is _not _what happened," Fiyero muttered furiously under his breath before Glinda rushed up and caught his arm. "Well, I can't just stand here grinning and going along with all this!" he hissed at her. Elphaba's breath caught. _Oh, please- does he believe in me, still? _

"Fiyero, do you think I _like _hearing them say those awful things about her? I _hate _it!" Glinda exclaimed, and Elphaba could breathe again.

"Then what are we doing here, let's go, let's get out of here-!" _And I'll stand up and show myself, and we can go, all three of us- and I won't be _alone _anymore!_

"I can't; I can't leave now, not when people are looking to me to raise their spirits!" Glinda cried.

Fiyero's words echoed Elphaba's thoughts, but his, though not cruel, were more malicious than hers. She had long ago accepted this attribute of Glinda's as a fact of her upbringing and personality, not her fault at all.

"You can't leave because you can't resist this. That's the truth."

"Well, maybe I can't. Is that so wrong? Who could?"

"You know who could. And who has."

Elation soared through her- he did believe, he didn't hate her!

Glinda stood silent for a moment.

"Fiyero," she murmured, "I miss her too. But- we can't just stop living! No one has searched harder for her than you! But don't you see, she doesn't want to be found. You have to face it."

_No, no no no, I do, I do, now that I know- now that I'm sure- of what you both feel! _Elphaba used all her strength just to keep herself from leaping at them, embracing them. Her broadside had fallen from her face and she sat there, open and undisguised, but neither of them turned to look at her.

"You're right," he said suddenly, heavily, and Elphaba's heart sank and shattered at once. "And if it'll make you happy, of course I'll marry you."

The resignation- could it truly mean what she thought?

"But- it'll make you happy too, right?" Glinda's face lay vulnerably open, her emotion clear in her plaintive, childish tone.

"Well, you know me," said Fiyero in a tone that so plainly belied it, "I'm always happy." He turned on his heel and stalked away, and Elphaba's plea echoed Glinda's.

"Fiyero?"

But then Glinda turned and called something inane as she hurried back to the safety of the podium, and she didn't see him stop. Didn't see him turn. Didn't see him lock eyes with the young woman on the bench, who then grabbed her broadside and dashed off hurriedly, hat clutched over her face, leaving her book.

Fiyero strode back and picked it up. It was a text he recognized, one they'd read at Shiz. He leafed through it. Half-familiar spidery handwriting covered the margins with deep thoughts and exclamations he would have never thought of if he'd studied the book for a century.

E. Thropp, was marked in firm inky strokes on the inside cover. _Stay away- or else! _ He stared after the girl in wonder, clutched the book to his chest, and dashed back into the palace to renew his search.


	2. Heart

He'd no idea what he had expected to find in here, of all places, that would lead him to Elphaba, but rereading the old file on her gave him at least the comfort of action.

He flipped open the book again and stared at the title page, the tilting sharp printing. He skimmed through the pages, hoping to find a hidden message or something equally farfetched in her annotations. Neat cursive compressed tightly into the margins decorated almost every page. On one page, he found she seemed to have engaged in a dialogue with herself. She'd underlined a passage in which the book described the central character's conflict over her feelings for her friend's love interest, and beside it she had written, "Fi- no, you idiot, NO, you aren't so pinheaded as to-" and then had apparently realized how crazy talking to herself in a book was and also what a liability it could be, and stopped.

But he knew what it meant.

She- she loved him? She _did_?

Her face flashed through his head. Proud and cold descending the stairs to the Ozdust Ballroom amid betrayal and cruel laughter, except for her wounded eyes. Bemused and startled, reaching halfway to his cheek in a poppy field. Standing up in the middle of class dressed ridiculously and _screaming _at a pair of _government agents _dragging away Dr. Dillamond. He could remember what he'd thought then. _God, what _nerve _she's got_. Then, a few moments later, after she'd accidentally cast that spell or whatever, her eyes widened with fear and shock- at herself.

He opened the file.

Elphaba Thropp, it said. No middle name. She had to have one, didn't she? He wondered what it was. For some reason it seemed really important. If he could figure out a reasonable way to ask Glinda, he decided, he would. Even if it seemed somehow…unethical.

This was her confidential file. Almost no one had access to it. He did, since he was the Captain of the Guard and, having known her at school, knew firsthand most of what they tried to keep hidden about her.

She was his own age, he didn't need to look at that. Her birthday was in midwinter, the first month of the year.

He slammed the folder shut in frustration. The rest of the descriptions were woefully inadequate. Hair: Black. What about how there were streaks of copper in it in the sun? Or how long it was, or that it was smooth as silk? Eyes: Hazel. What about how they were a dozen different colors, earth and trees and gold and sea glass. And how she could use them to pin him against the wall as effectively as any metal skewer? Or that absolutely awful glare she could do? Distinguishing features: Green skin. Ha. Green like spring leaves. And that beauty mark on her neck, the one she once told Avaric was the scar from a vampire's bite, and that she was a vampire herself but she'd injected chlorophyll into her veins so she could go out in the sunlight and _that _was why she was green?

Av had half-believed her, too, not least because he'd been plastered at the time. He'd tried not to show it, but when he kept going, "But you're not serious? Right? Right?" and she'd given him that little tight, knowing, smile and said, "I'm not going to lie to make you feel comfortable, Avaric," and then bared her teeth menacingly at him and walked away without another word, it was obvious that Av was terrified. He tried to be nonchalant, but since his roommate was out of town he invited Fiyero to stay in the other bed and sat up all night staring out the window and annoying the hell out of Fiyero. He kept lifting the shades and pacing, sure Elphaba was going to come and get him any second. Even though he tried to pretend he was just too wired to sleep. The next day, she merely asked him what in hell would've made him think she'd want to make an ass like him immortal.

She was _that _convincing, but she couldn't persuade people to her point of view. She could play a role, and she was charismatic, but not in any sort of way that made people want to follow her, just in a way that made them fascinated with her, like a moth to a flame, or like staring at a train wreck or a crime scene. So that was what he didn't understand, her seeming inability to get people behind her. Or maybe she _could_, and she'd just said screw you to everyone at Shiz, like when she'd told Avaric she'd never want him around with her for all eternity. That was a valid idea. If he were her, he wouldn't want to go into hiding with most of them, either. Actually, even if he _weren't _her, he didn't think he would. Except for Elphaba herself, and that begged the question: if she were in love with him like she'd written, why hadn't she ever asked him to join her?

Then Fiyero realized how idiotic a question that was. She hadn't exactly been welcome back at Shiz after her extremely public testament to revolution, and as a tenderfoot terrorist it wasn't a risk the analytical Elphaba would have taken. Especially not when she believed he was happy with Glinda, and she knew Glinda would already be distraught by what she deemed Elphaba's abandonment of her. And Elphaba had amply demonstrated that she was far too noble and principled for her own good, he reflected. For her own good- but wasn't rejection of one's "own good" the point of nobility, Elphaba's voice said in his head. Ha.

And after Shiz, he mused, ignoring the mental projection of Elphaba sitting in his head, he'd joined the Gale Force; well, idiot, he said to himself, what could she possibly have thought of that? She was hardly going to go racing to ask him to join her terrorist group. She probably thought that he wanted her dead.

But, now that he'd seen her and she'd heard him tell Glinda that he still believed she was good, that what she'd done was right…

He _would _see her again. He would find her if she didn't come to him- he smirked- like a vampire, like a witch in the night.

_Elphaba_

She ran out of the square and finally resumed a normal pace as she strode towards the City's West Gate, her shawl drawn over her head.

In this district, among the poorer, she lived in a little apartment tucked in behind a tiny, musty old bookshop. Browsing in it one day, Elphaba had uncovered a cache of banned books and looked questioningly at the owner. After that, she had shown herself and the two had become good friends. He was elderly, in his sixties, she'd guess, and he said she reminded him of his daughter, who had moved to the southeastern edge of Gillikin when she had gotten married. He kept Elphaba well supplied with books and pamphlets; she brought him his groceries when she got her own, as the walk to the market was rather steep and difficult, and she kept him in lively conversation as well. He didn't mind at all that she was a detested outlaw, and he told her that she was the only person he'd ever met with such unflinching integrity and courage, which she needed to hear. But this week, he had gone to visit his daughter, so Elphaba was alone. Which she didn't mind at all. She had to think.

She had left her book, she realized soon after she had run. And Fiyero had picked it up. He knew she had heard him. He knew she had heard him. He knew that she knew he believed in her still.

But what to do, what to do- she had to talk to him.

Perhaps, he and Glinda-

But that thought burned and she lost her courage immediately. No, Miss Elphaba would not be going to see Fiyero tonight.

She got on her broom, pushed open the window, and flew due East.

_Fiyero_:

He did not want to go to the ball. He stood staring at himself in the mirror, dressed in his uniform- no wonder she wouldn't ask him to join her, he thought, staring at the vivid green, the ominously shining gold bars. The picture he saw reflected back at him made him shiver.

Was it normal, to hate one's life so, to feel so trapped, at only twenty-one? He knew it wasn't. Glinda and Av didn't. _She _didn't, even. He wondered briefly about Boq and Nessa. After Elphaba had left Shiz and Glinda had gone a bit reclusive, Nessa had nearly had a nervous breakdown and Boq hadn't had the heart to break things off with her. For all Fiyero knew, they were still together. He knew Nessarose was the Governor of Munchkinland, though; last month Glin had told him that her- _their_, Elphaba and Nessa's- father had died. Stress-related causes, it must be hard being a bastard. Fiyero had heard Nessa was calling it embarrassment and blaming Elphaba, which seemed to be a sport in that family- in this _country_, for Lurlina's sake! The poor girl.

A knock came at his door. He made a noncommittal sound and Glinda, swathed in ethereal chiffon and sprinkled with diamonds from head to toe, appeared.

"Are you coming down?" she asked tentatively.

He pretended to be busy fussing with his stupid epaulets.

"Yes, in a minute," he said, turning to her. "All right then. Let's go."

He thought his voice sounded like that of a convicted prisoner.

_Elphaba_

She crept into the abandoned throne room of the Palace, still shaken after what had happened with Boq. She was determined to make as much right in her life as she could, though it would take a long time, miserable failure that she was. Even her attempts at redemption failed. She had tried to mend things with Nessa, and look what had happened.

She knew the Wizard kept the monkeys here. The horror of seeing them, crying out in agony in their _cage_- was as fresh as if it had become moments ago instead of three years. Now, all that was needed was to find some sort of release or-

"I knew you'd be back." The booming voice sent her several inches into the air, but as she whirled on the Wizard, her face was carved from stone, her tone tremblingly emotionless when she spoke.

"What do _you _want?"

"Just listen to what I have to-"

"No." She gave him a look that would have frozen molten lava. "I will most certainly _not _listen. Why bother? All you ever do is lie, you bastard. I'm setting these monkeys free, and you can go right behind that goddamned giant head and fu-"

He held up a cautionary hand.

"Please, Elphaba, I've not come to hurt you."

"You've got that right. You've hurt me, you've hurt me so much I can't _be _hurt anymore," she hissed. A gleaming knife was suddenly in her hand. "I can set these monkeys free with or without you, and I _ought _to do this country a _public service _and _kill_ you-"

"_Guards!" _he screamed. In one motion, she pressed down on every button and lever on the back of the Oz head. The cage appeared and, with a shudder, opened, allowing a profusion of panicked winged monkeys to sweep upwards and out.

Elphaba laughed in raucous hysteria ad the guards in their menacing uniforms appeared.

"Fiyero?" she asked, shocked.

"I don't believe it," he said quietly, and leveled his silver pistol at her heart.


	3. Gone

"Silence, witch!"

Her eyes darkened with sorrow and went cold in the space of an instant, and it was in that instant that the cacophony of rejoicing monkeys was interrupted by a pitiful, pained, twisted, unmistakable _baaaahhhh_.

Elphaba whirled with typical disregard for the dozen or so rifles pointed at her, and rushed over to the prostrate form of Dr. Dillamond, ignoring the fact that her action could have been taken as an attempt to flee and that the owners of those dozen rifles- less one- would have been all too happy for an excuse to discharge their weapons' lethal loads.

But Fiyero lifted a staying hand.

"She's not going anywhere," he said. "There's guards at the ball, and stationed at all the exits. Don't worry, boys." He smiled, an expression that his men took to be maliciously eager but one that Elphaba, had she been looking, would have recognized as one appreciative of an irony. "Justice will be done."

Recklessly, Elphaba lifted her head and looked at him, ignoring the stir her sudden movement caused. She rose, slowly, casting an expression of terrific sadness at the whimpering professor, who turned and ran almost the moment Elphaba looked away.

"Fiyero," she said again, quietly, in a tone that he would have considered pleading had it come from anyone but Elphaba.

"I said _silence!_" he yelled, trying desperately to convey a quite different message with his eyes. But Elphaba had turned cold and disdainful, and was staring at the golden Oz head with murder inscribed plainly on her face.

Fiyero sighed inwardly and addressed his men, barking an order for water in accordance with the first ridiculous rumor about Elphaba that leapt to his mind. As his men saluted and ran, Elphaba turned her fierce glare on him, clearly insinuating that not only was he a complete and unapologetic _moron_, he was also an incontrovertible bastard unworthy of breathing air.

So the look on her face when he shifted his rifle so that it was aimed at the golden Oz head was one of abject shock, which was only compounded when he strode behind it and pulled out the protesting Wizard.

"Quiet, Your _Ozness_," he spat, "Unless you want all your guests to know the truth about the _Wonderful Wizard of Oz_."

Elphaba was ignoring the man she hated in favor of the one she might just love.

"I thought you'd changed," she said in wonderment.

"I have," Fiyero answered, and in his eyes and the way he moved, just slightly, was the wish to reach for her. But he couldn't.

"I don't think I could stand it, if you thought that." She paused. "I heard…you and Glinda, talking- does she still believe in me?"

Fiyero took her in. He thought disbelievingly that the Wicked Witch of the West was about to dissolve into tears without much more prompting.

"Of course she does," he said. And, speak of the devil, Glinda of the Upper Uplands came running in, a tangle of bright tulle.

"Elphaba?!" she half-squealed. "What in Oz are you doing here? I'm so glad to seeeeeee you!" she launched herself across the room and wrapped the bemused Elphaba in a tight, rib-crushing hug.

"There, there?" Elphaba tried, patting her friend's back awkwardly. Fiyero smiled at her over Glinda's head. The Wizard looked beyond confused.

"yeah, you're not all that wonderful at propaganda, your Ozness," said Fiyero. "There are people who still believe in her. Who still love her."

Glinda looked up, slowly, and detached herself from Elphaba.

"Love?" she asked, slowly, tremulously, and Fiyero nodded. Elphaba looked simultaneously elated and trapped.

"It wasn't like _that_, Glin," she said.

"It kind of was," Fiyero put in unhelpfully. Elphaba spun to glare at him with her hands on her hips.

"If it was, it was only in your dirty fantasies, because the only thing it ever was was nothing except possibly thinking, but if you intend to-"

"Okay, fine!" Glinda yelled. "I get it. I do. Just- please, go. Leave."

"Glinda-" Elphaba began, but the blonde held up a perfectly manicured hand and looked at Elphaba with such actual emotion that the green witch stopped short, speechless, for perhaps the first time in her life.

"_Go_," said Glinda. "Before- just go."

The Wizard cleared his throat.

"Miss Glinda, do you really think it wise-"

Glinda turned on him with eyes that bore an eerie resemblance to those of an angry Elphaba.

"Stick it in your ear, turkey," she said.

Elphaba covered her mouth but it was not enough to prevent her extreme attack of giggles from escaping.

"Miss Glinda!" cried the Wizard. Fiyero waved the gun at him. Elphaba came to her senses.

"All right, let's _go_," Elphie cried, rushing to the window with her broomstick. She looked at Glinda. "you too. You haven't a choice, now. Most opportune moment to grow a backbone, wasn't it? Rip off about ten of those layers, and quickly, and get on." Fiyero clambered up behind Elphaba, wrapping his arms about her waist. She gave him a look, and he did his best to shrug without removing his hands. Glinda mournfully shucked off the majority of her glittery tulle and followed suit, and the three soared off into the starry sky as the soldiers came tromping back in, staring out the open window in utter confusion.


End file.
